Live Action News

President Obama vetoes legislation defunding Planned Parenthood

President Barack Obama vetoed legislation Friday that would have ended $400 million of the over $500 million in forced taxpayer funding going to Planned Parenthood for one year. The measure would have shifted Planned Parenthood’s public subsidies to comprehensive health care clinics that offer more health services and outnumber the abortion giant 20 to 1.

H.R. 3762, which included efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, is the first bill to pass both houses of Congress and make it to the president’s desk.

The U.S. Senate passed the measure last year using the reconciliation process, which prevented Democrat lawmakers from filibustering the bill. The U.S. House approved the Senate version this week.

Live Action President Lila Rose issued a statement in response to the president’s veto.

“President Obama, against the will of the people and the Congress that they elected, is forcing every taxpaying American to subsidize the nation’s biggest abortion chain – a corporation that single-handedly kills over 320,000 children every year by abortion, including children who are up to six months of development in the womb.

“It’s no surprise that in polls, voters have rated President Obama as the country’s worst president since World War II. His extremism on abortion and his unflinching opposition to every pro-life policy, as well as his willful ignorance of the multiple documented criminal acts of Planned Parenthood, show that he’s committed to paying back the abortion giant for the $12 million it spent to get him reelected in 2012.

“Abortion extremism is not popular, and when it’s exposed, it becomes more than distasteful to the vast majority of people. That’s why while Planned Parenthood whole-heartedly supports late-term and even partial-birth abortion, the vast majority of Americans stand against it.

“Live Action will continue to expose Planned Parenthood’s criminal acts, its extremism, and its repeated abuses of women and girls so that Congress and new leadership in Washington will be motivated to finish the job and permanently end taxpayer funding to the nation’s biggest abortion chain.”

While a veto by President Obama was expected, the passage of the bill shows that even under the most pro-abortion administration in U.S. history, there are enough pro-life votes to send a bill defunding America’s largest abortion chain to the White House.

The veto ensures that 2016 is a critical year for the pro-life movement and for the future of Planned Parenthood.